I remember the day like it was yesterday. I guess it's true what they say about tragedy. It's tattooed into your mind. It was gorgeous, sunny and an unusually warm day for September. I was living in Park Slope at the time -- The wind from downtown Manhattan directly hits Park Slope in the morning. The screaming neighbors and the smoke in the air woke me up to an excruciating pain on my left abdomen.
The phone rang and it was my roommate's father asking if I was alright. Non-chalantly, I told him I was fine which must have sounded weird to him because he told me to turn on the TV.
My landlord from upstairs came banging on my apartment door, "Fill all your containers with water! Fill up your bathtub!" I felt my knees give out and all I could think about was my boyfriend who worked across the street from the Towers, his brother who worked in the same office, friends who worked on the same floor and my best friend who lived just blocks away.
I rang my best friend first who like a total consummate New Yorker didn't let a plane crashing into a building stop her from making it to her early morning meeting uptown. Unreal. I couldn't get through to my boyfriend so I rang up his roommate.
"Holy shit, you're -- First one to get through... I've --- Tryin' to call my mo-. They told us to go back--. We ----- And ran downstairs. -- Like smoke everywhere and then the plane. Everyone started screamin'. We all started -- -- Went back. He said he was gonna help people. I lost him. I'm so sorry, honey. I'm sure he's fine."
I'm nearly finished with my grad school applications. Working on the personal statements required me to look back in hindsight in order to verbalize my journey towards medicine.
I've always said, it was in 2007 when I woke up paralyzed from my waist down, which was the catalyst that led me to travel that subsequently changed my life drastically. But there were seeds that led to building of my fiery catalyst.
As I look back, I can't deny 9/11 was the first seed that made me want to reconsider things in my life.
I vividly remember working at a bar in the Village, taking whiskey shots, watching the election, chatting up friends, opening up a Corona for a different boyfriend and arrogantly convinced Gore will take it. The disbelief of Bush's 2nd term punched me with a sense of hopelessness which became my second seed.
All good things come in 3 and my third seed came disguised as I was waiting for a delayed flight to Flores with a surprise stopover to freakin' West Timor. Delusional with a high fever, body ache and sore throat -- Sick of Indonesia. Tired of South East Asia. Impatient with foreigners. I looked over the shoulder of a boy checking the news on the computer and saw the face of my new President. I ran around the airport, screaming like a total maniac, "I can go home!"
It's all a journey with little seeds planted one-by-one.
Just as I remember 9/11, I remember 9/12 even more. There was a heavy emotion of feeling lost. New Yorkers never feel "lost". In the midst of this unusual sentiment, I suddenly felt a sense of community.
Back in Bali, I had told an Australian I was from the States. Without a beat, he said, "Your country deserved 9/11. You have too much blood on your hands."
By then I had gotten used to the Anti-American attitude from so many people. All the while, having blatant ignorance and racism spat in my face for not only being an American but being an Asian-American.
Having people completely ignore me or treat me with such disdain because of the way I looked was something I had never experienced before. Despite it all, I could always go back to the fact that as much as I may have struggled with Home, there was no way in hell my immigrant parents could have received the opportunities they did to raise me, a woman of color, with the notion that my gender, race or ethnicity could ever suppress my dreams.
Unlike so many other travelers who make the connection of service and purpose, I knew I had to come back home to serve.
It's a strange thing to celebrate death but I think we celebrate because it's symbolic. It represents a sense of community -- Something that outshines a certified copy of a birth certificate from Honolulu.
